In this dual narrative, one begins to understand how resolutely Lynch has ignored the glamorous project of Being a Movie Director because he had nothing else in mind but the uncompromising and sometimes absurd destiny of Being an Artist.

My Ex-Life

By Stephen McCauley

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(Flatiron Books; 324 pages; $25.99)

In his adroit and affecting novel, McCauley revisits the special closeness that may arise between a gay man and a straight woman.

The Great Believers

By Rebecca Makkai

(Viking; 421 pages; $27)

Makkai’s compulsively readable novel mows back and forth across decades, during the catastrophic AIDS crisis and latterly as terrorism begins making routine claims on daily realities.

The Third Bank of the River

Power and Survival in the Twenty-First-Century Amazon

By Chris Feliciano Arnold

(Picador; 338 pages; $28)

Arnold’s ambitious first book is a journey of discovery, at once a work of investigative journalism, a travelogue and a memoir, steeped in history.